

This
Merc retro story smacks of the trickster. I’m beginning to think that maybe a lot of the snafus what we experience during these periods are really more about the trickster than anything else. The trickster, after all, is sometimes so in your face that you can’t ignore what has happened. You’re forced to look at the event or experience and figure out what the message is. You may resist, screaming and howling all the way to the discovery, but one way or another, the trickster gets his message across.
So this afternoon, we decide to go see Source Code. We leave the house a bit early so we can go by the hardware store for ant killer. It’s been unseasonably hot in Florida and already, we’re being inundated by ants. These ants are the hungry, relentless types. Obnoxious.
So while Rob is in the hardware store, I run into the drug store for some stuff. I finish before he does, don’t have the key to the car, so I head into the hardware store. He’s at the counter, the clerk hurries over, he tells her we’re on our way to the movie and we’re running late. In other words, can we get on with it, please?
“Oh, what movie are you seeing?” she asks.
“Source code.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Nope. Tonight I’m off to see Insidious, by the same people who did Paranormal Activity. Did you guys see that?
Yes,we did. Okay movie. I ask what she finds offensive about Source Code, which came out only today, April 1. She has just seen the trailer, but feels that Jake Gyllenhaal is just trying to re-do The Matrix. We leave fast, we’re now late for the movie. And we are about to sustain a big fat dent in the rear right corner of our car.
In the parking lot, we have a giant vehicle to our left, not a Hummer but something longer, maybe a Suburban or a van of some kind that blocks Rob’s view of oncoming cars as he backs out. I hear a sickening crunch, squeeze my eyes shut. Crap, are you kidding me? I look back and yes, the bad news is there.
A skinny, elderly man hops out of his car and is already pulling a card from his wallet when Rob and I reach him. He speaks with an accent, he wants us to call his son. He doesn’t have his cell with him, neither does Rob, and my cell oddly refuses to get a signal. I keep trying the son’s number while Rob and the man debate the issues about damage to his car. It’s minimal, some black streaks from our fender.
I start talking to the man in Spanish. Will he take cash for the damage? Rob pulls out a hundred dollar bill. “This should cover it,” he says.
“Cincuenta mas,” the old man says. Fifty more. “The car it is new.”
I still can’t get a signal. I tell the man he needs to go into Walgreen’s to call his son. He rolls his eyes. He is NOT happy. No one is HAPPY. Suddenly, Rob is working on he guy’s fender with some stuff he bought in the hardware store. The black paint from our car comes off his fender. Our car is much worse off.
“Look at this,” Rob says in English. “No problem. The paint is gone. If this were my car, I’d take the hundred bucks and leave.”
Nope, the guy isn’t having any of it. In Spanish, I ask if he’ll take another fifty bucks for the minimal damage. He mulls it over, looks at the bills, nods. That’s it. Money exchanges hands, we head off to the movie – and at some point during the course of this mind blowing big screen tale, I recognize the eerie parallels.
Source Code is about parallel realities, the world of physicists Michio Kaku and Brian Greene, an intelligent thriller, that focuses on the last eight minutes of the life of a man on a doomed train. One review compared it to Ground Hog Day, 24, and The Matrix. This same reviewer called the idea “preposterous,” but noted that Gyllenhaal excelled in this role. And yes, he does. He’s amazing. The story, the plot, the concept, everything is tightly written, satisfying to the very last second. Move over, Keanu Reeves, you’re yesterday’s paradigm.
When we walked out of this movie, I felt that our personal precursor to this movie was the fender bender incident. It could have gone any number of ways, and did, if you subscribe to the many world theory of quantum physics. In one reality, for instance, the man’s son arrived, insurance companies were summoned, our rates soared. In another, it didn’t happen. In yet another possibility, we settled for a hundred bucks. Or fifty. Or, the best scenario, we didn’t back into this guy at all. But what I took away from this brilliant movie is that each scenario is viable.
I’m just grateful that the possibility we experienced cost us just $150 and no injuries to anyone, anywhere. A car can be replaced, a life cannot. Unless you’re Gyllenhaal, in Source Code.